The difference to a salaried worker is that the salaried worker gets the money for the work they do more or less immediately. The artist typically gets the payment only long after completing the work.

(Self employed are in a complicated way in between)

> The artist typically gets the payment only long after completing the work.

Not that long; IIRC, the vast majority of the money made for most artistic works is received within the first decade after creation; the share of artistic works returning much after that compared to before is small.

Sure, the works you’ve heard of are often exceptions to this, but that's because you are vastly more likely to be aware of things way out in the successful tail end of the distribution.

I would even assume less than a decade. A music piece gets attention on release, but only few are remembered a year later. Many books sell the first edition and aren't reprinted.

While for some it is the long tail which makes it viable.

I think that's why the post said "starts a business and passes away"; they have stopped being salaried and rely on the good prospects of the ownership of an own business to do well (from salaried, to "stock" owner of something that still has very little financial value or that the financial value that it has depends on the founder still being alive).

Why should a 70 year old's same work product be worth much less than a 20 year old's? It should just be a period of time, with possibly exponentially increasing renewal fees so funds go into the common good the more the public domain is deprived.

Because you can't take your work with you when you die, so it can't matter what happens to it and should be considered common good afterwards. I'd say it's actually worth more, to humanity as a whole.

> so it can't matter what happens to it

Even ignoring inheritance this is wrong, because you can sell it to someone who might outlive you, and spend the proceeds while you're still alive. The amount you can sell it for is going to be much less if there is substantial risk that the property goes away soon after the sale.

Think about this in the scenerio of e.g. a publishing advance. Just means older people will get paid less, publishers will dedicate less to marketing their work, etc.

This actually makes a lot of sense. If Disney was volunteering to pay hundreds of millions per year in additional taxes voluntarily ...